Marxist philosophers who are so fond of preaching about the withering away of the state would have loved it. But for the people of Bihar, the nine-day-long strike by six lakh non-gazetted officers, which stopped work in nearly all government departments, brought only misery.

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Farzand Ahmed

October 19, 2013

ISSUE DATE: January 15, 1982

UPDATED: July 7, 2014 13:46 IST

Marxist philosophers who are so fond of preaching about the withering away of the state would have loved it. But for the people of Bihar, the nine-day-long strike by six lakh non-gazetted officers (NGOs), which stopped work in nearly all government departments, brought only misery. Schools closed down as teachers left their classrooms to court arrest in the streets, even the chronically ill were turned away from hospitals, and large areas had to make do without water. Needless to say nearly all the Government offices in the state stopped functioning.

Swift Response: The strike elicited a surprisingly swift response. Chief Minister Jagannath Mishra, with the limited forces at his command, first ordered a public relations blitzkrieg, taking out large advertisements in the newspapers and issuing lengthy statements replete with complex statistics to justify the Government's stance. Mishra then called out the Border Security Force and the Central Reserve Police Force to maintain essential services, suspended 300 strikers, sacked 40, and announced that 'saboteurs' would be shot at sight.

The Government's moves evidently paid dividends- When the strike ended on December 20 it was on a note of compromise. The Government claimed that it had saved the state's economy from 'ruin'. The employees received part of their demands plus an ex gratia payment of Rs 500 each for the strike period.

Dismissal orders were withdrawn as a 'gesture of goodwill' and absence during the strike period was treated as leave. Mishra also magnanimously praised the ncos for withdrawing the strike saying that they had given "good evidence of their maturity and demonstrated that they lagged behind none in safeguarding the interests of the stale".

Striking employees: Swift response

At the root of the dispute was a complicated 1,402-page report submitted in May, 1981 by the fourth Pay Revision Committee (PRC). The four-member committee set-up in 1978 under Justice U.N. Sinha had suggested wide-ranging changes. The Government accepted 13 out of 22 scales recommended for class three and four employees and promised to consider the other nine scales for gazetted officers. It fixed the date of implementation as April 1981 instead of February 1978.

When the Government found that this move encountered opposition from the NGOS it set up a five-member committee headed by Chief Secretary P.P. Nayyar and took refuge behind the plea that the PRC report was not unanimous as the member-secretary R.N. Dash, had written a dissenting note. Mishra claimed that the PRC had turned the entire pay structure topsy-turvy.

He also claimed that the committee had used different norms to determine the scales of each and every category of employees in different departments. A result of this , he said, was that varying scales of pay were fixed for employees in the same scale. Said Mishra: "If this were implemented the pay scales of the state government officers would exceed those of the ias and ips officers to some extent."

Differences: Mishra also took advantage of the differences amongst the members of the committee. The committee had calculated that their recommendations if backdated to 1978 would cost the Government Rs 180 crore. Dash, however estimated that the total liabilities would be around Rs 280 crore.

The leaders of the striking employees challenged this figure but themselves differed over the actual amount. Said Yogeshwar Gope, president of the Communist Party of India-backed Bihar State Non-Gazetted Employees Federation, the largest organisation among the NGOS: "The implementation from 1978 would hardly involve Rs 29.20 crore." Naresh Chandra Shukla, chairman of the joint action committee, however, estimated that the implementation of the award would cost Rs 31.50 crore.

These difficulties arose partly because of the faulty statistics at the command of the Government. Neither the Government nor its employees were able to estimate with any degree of certainty the number of people who work for the Government.

But though the NGOS' strike is over the Mishra government is soon going to face other problems. The Bihar Health Services Association, among others, is expected to launch an agitation in the near future. Then Bihar, can continue its unique experiments in non-government.

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